英语翻译中级口译-47_真题-无答案

英语翻译中级口译-47

(总分100,考试时间90分钟)

TRANSLATION TEST

1. Help! I Can"t Cope

A friend who had lived in New York during the 1970s was recently here for a brief visit. I asked him what, in this ever- changing city. he found to be most startlingly changed. He thought for a moment before answering. "Probably the visible increase in prostitution," he replied.

My astonishment at **ment was so palpable that he felt obliged to explain. "Haven"t you noticed," he asked with surprise, "all these young women standing furtively in doorways? You never used to see that when I was here."

I couldn"t resist my laughter. "They"re not prostitutes," I clarified. "They"re smokers."

For indeed they are. Most American office buildings no longer allow smoking on the premises, driving those who can"t resist the urge onto the streets. The sight of them, lounging on "coffee breaks" near the entrances to their workplace, puffing away, has become ubiquitous. Since most new smokers apparently are women, my friend"s confusion was understandable. And there are more than ever since September 11.

Stress is probably better measured anecdotally than statistically. I"m not aware of surveys on this matter, but anyone living in New York these days has stories of friends who, amid the scares of 9-11 and its aftermath, have sought solace in cigarettes. I used to go to a gym in the Metlife Building over Grand Central Terminal. Some days so many people stood outside, tensely smoking, that I assumed an evacuation had just been ordered. At least three friends who"d given up tobacco have lapsed back into the habit, claiming they couldn"t calm their nerves any other way. Others have increased their previously reduced intakes. Some, in their quest for a crutch, have begun smoking for the first time. In modern Manhattan the frantic puff has become the preferred alternative to the silent scream.

New Yorkers, of course, are coping in more imaginative ways, as well. A friend swears he knows someone who has stashed a canoe in his closet in case he needs to escape Manhattan by river. Another says he has moved a heavy objet d"art into his office so that he can smash the window if a firebomb makes the elevator or the staircase impassable. A women working on one of the lowers of her office building has acquired a rope long enough to lower herself to the ground; one who works at the top of a skyscraper tells me she"s looking into the purchase of a parachute. Still others have stocked up on such items of antiterrorist chic as flame-retardant ponchos, anthrax-antidote antibiotics and heavy-duty gas masks.

Recent polls indicate that American women are more stressed than men. Over 50 percent in one national survey of 1,000 adults admitted to being "very" or "somewhat" worried in the wake of the terrorist assaults. The anthrax scare may have receded. But recent incidents, from the airplane

crash in New York Borough of Queens to the arrest of the London "shoe-bomber" to rumors of suitcase nukes, seem to have had permanently unsettling effects. Take food. A surprising number of people are apparently unable to touch their plates. Others are eating too much, seeking reassurance in "comfort food." Given the alternatives, smoking seems a reasonable refuge; after all, the long-term threat of cancer seems far more remote these days than the prospect of explosive incineration.

2. The Ballooning Pension Crisis in Western Europe

Millions of elderly Germans received a notice from the Health & Social Security Ministry earlier this month that struck a damaging blow to the welfare state. The statement informed them that their pensions were being cut. The **e as a stop-gap measure to control Germany"s ballooning pension crisis. Not surprisingly, it was an **e change for senior citizens such as Sabine Wetzel, a 67-year-old retired bank teller, who was told that her state pension would be cut by $12.30 a month. "It was a real shock," she says. "My pension had always gone up in the past."

There"s more bad news on the way. On March 11, Germany"s lower house of Parliament passed a bill gradually cutting state pensions—which have been rising steadily since World War Ⅱ—from 53% of average wages now to 46% by 2020. And Germany is not alone. Governments across Western Europe are racing to curb pension benefits. In Italy, the government plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 57 to 60, while France will require that civil servants put in 40 years rather than 37.5 to qualify for a full pension. The reforms **ing despite tough opposition from unions, leftist politicians, and pensioners" groups.

The explanation is simple: Europeans are living longer and having fewer children. By 2030 there will only be two workers per pensioner, compared with four in 2000. With fewer young workers paying into the system, cuts are being made to cover a growing shortfall. The gap between **ing in and payments going out could top $10 billion this year in Germany alone. "In the future, a state pension alone will no longer be enough to maintain the living standards employees had before they retired," says German Health ＆Social Security Minister. Says the Finance Minister of Italy: "The welfare state is producing too few cradles and too few graves."

Of course, those population trends have been forecast for years. Some countries, such as Britain and the Netherlands, have responded by making individuals and their employers assume more of the responsibility for pensions. But many Continental governments dragged their feet. Now, the rapid run-up in costs is forcing them to act. State-funded pension payments make up around 12% of gross domestic product in Germany and France and 15% in Italy—two percentage points more than 20 years ago. Pensions account for an average 21% of government spending across the European Union. The rising cost is having a serious impact on major European nations" economy. Their governments have no choice but to make pension reform a priority. Just as worrisome is the toll being exacted on the private sector. Corporate contributions to state pension systems—which make up 19.5% of total gross pay in Germany—add to Europe"s already bloated labor costs. That, in turn, blunts manufacturers" competitiveness and keeps unemployment rateshigh.

To cope, Germany and most of its EU partners are using tax breaks to encourage employees to put money into private pension schemes. But even if private pensions become more popular, European governments will have to increase minimum retirement ages and reduce public pensions. While today"s **plain about reduced benefits, the next generation of retirees may look back on their parents" pension checks with envy.

3. The Difficulty of Translation

Since translating is a skill which requires considerable practice, most people assume that it can be taught, and to some extent this is true. But it is also true that really exceptional translators are born, not made. Potential translators must have a high level of aptitude for the creative use of language, or they are not likely to be outstanding in their profession. Perhaps the greatest benefit from instruction in translating is to become aware of one"s own limitations, something which a translator of Steinbeck"s of Mice and Men into Chinese should have learned. Then he would not have translated English mule-skinner into a Chinese phrase meaning "a person who skins the hide of a mule".

For many people the need for human translation seems paradoxical in this age of computers. Some **puters can be loaded with dictionaries and grammars, why not **puters do the work? Computers can perform certain very simple interlingual tasks, providing there is sufficient pre-editing and post-editing. But neither advertising brochures nor lyric poetry can ever been reduced to the kind of logic required of computer programs. Computer printouts of translations can often be understood, if the persons involved already know what the text is supposed to say. But the results of machine translating are usually in an unnatural form of language and sometimes just plain weird. Furthermore, real improvements will **e from merely doctoring the program or adding rules. The human brain is not only digital and analogic, but it also has a built-in system of values which gives it a componentially incalculable advantage over machines. Human translators will always be necessary for any text that is stylistically appealing and **plex—which includes most of what is **municating in another language.

The most difficult texts to translate are not, however, highly literary productions, but rather those texts which say nothing, the type of language often used by politicians and delegates to international forums. In fact, a group of professional translators at the United Nations headquarters in New York City have insisted that the most difficult text to translate is one in which the speaker or writer has attempted to say nothing. The next most difficult type of text is one filled with irony and sarcasm, since in a written text the paralinguistic clues to the meaning are usually much more difficult to detect than when someone is speaking. And perhaps the third most difficult type of text is a book or article on translating in which the illustrative examples rarely match.

Some people imagine that the greatest problem in translating is to find the right words and constructions in the receptor or target language. On the contrary, the most difficult task for the translator is to understand thoroughly the designative and associative meanings of the text to be translated. This involves not only knowing the meanings of the words and the syntactic relations, but also being sensitive to all the nuances of the stylist device. As one struggling translator summed up his problem, "if I really understood what the text means, I could easily translate it." 4. Misinterpretation in Cross-cultural Communication

In cross-**munication the danger of misinterpretation is greatest among people who speak different native tongues or come from different cultural backgrounds, because cultural difference necessarily implies different assumptions about natural and obvious ways to be polite. Anthropologist Thomas Kochman gives the example of a white office worker who appeared with a bandaged arm and felt rejected because her black fellow worker didn"t mention it. The doubly wounded worker assumed that her silent colleague didn"t notice or didn"t care. But the co-worker was purposely not calling attention to something her colleague might not want to talk about. She let her decide whether or not to mention it, being considerate by not imposing. Kochman says, based on his research, that these differences reflect recognizable black and white styles.

An American woman visiting England was repeatedly offended when the British ignored her in a setting in which she thought they should pay attention. For example, she was sitting at a booth in a railway—station cafeteria. A couple began to settle into the opposite seat in the same booth. They unloaded their luggage; they laid their coats on the seat; he asked what she would like to eat and went off to get it; she slid into the booth facing the American. And throughout all this, they showed no sign of having noticed that someone was already sitting in the booth.

When the British woman lit up a cigarette, the American began ostentatiously looking around for another table to move to. Of course there was none; that"s why the British couple had sat in her booth in the first place. The smoker immediately crushed out her cigarette and apologized. This showed that she had noticed that someone else was sitting in the booth, and that she was not inclined to disturb her.

To the American, politeness requires talk between strangers forced to share a booth in a cafeteria, if only a fleeting "Do you mind if I sit down?" or a conventional "is anyone sitting here?" even if it"s obvious no one is. The omission of such talk seemed to her like dreadful rudeness. The American couldn"t see that another system of politeness was at work. By not acknowledging her presence, the British couple freed her from the obligation to acknowledge theirs. The American expected a show of involvement; they were being polite by not imposing.

An American man who had lived for years in Japan explained a similar politeness ethic. He lived, as many Japanese do, in extremely close quarters—a tiny room separated from neighboring rooms by paper-thin walls. In order to preserve privacy in this most unprivate situation, his Japanese neighbor with the door open, they steadfastly glued their gaze ahead as if they were alone in a desert. The American confessed to feeling what I believe most Americans would feel if a next-door neighbor passed within a few feet without acknowledging their presence—snubbed. But he realized that the intention was not rudeness by omitting to show involvement, but politeness by not imposing.